Rachel Filene Seidman

Visiting Assistant Professor, PPS 140S - WOMEN AS LEADERS

Rachel Seidman is an historian and the Associate Director of the new Duke Center for History, Public Policy and Social Change. An expert in U.S. history and women’s studies and an experienced leader in higher education and non-profit settings, Rachel is teaching the Women as Leaders course for HLP.

Prior to coming to Duke, Rachel worked in the academic and non-profit world. After lecturing in the history department at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in 1995-1996, Rachel began working at Carleton College. She served as a visiting assistant professor there from 1997-2001, teaching courses in American history, women’s studies, and American Studies. She also taught in the college’s summer programs for high-school students and teachers interested in history and writing.

From 2002-2004, Rachel worked as a freelance writer and editor; her clients included the Oxford University Press, the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, Minnesota Parent, and The History Channel magazine. Most recently she served as Executive Director of the Melpomene Institute for Women’s Health Research from 2004-2006 in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Rachel graduated from Oberlin College with a Bachelor of Arts degree and highest honors in history and classics. She received her Ph.D. from Yale, specializing in 19th-century American social history and women’s history. She is a recipient of the Mellon Fellowship for the Humanities, the Blanchard Scholarship Prize in History, the Leah Deborah Freed Memorial Prize in Women's History, and several research grants. Her book The Civil War: A History in Documents, published in 2001, was selected by the National Social Studies Association as one of the best books in the social studies.

Rachel lives with her husband and two daughters in Carrboro, N.C.